LGBTQ+ Elders Tell Washington: We Refuse to Be Invisible
By sending more than 9,000 letters to Washington, people across the country raised their voices with SAGE and many other organizations, LGBTQ+ and allies alike, to tell the Trump administration that we refuse to be invisible.
Given the erasure of LGBTQ+ issues from White House and federal agency websites within hours of Donald Trump’s inauguration, we at SAGE were alarmed but not surprised when we learned of the Trump administration’s plans to eliminate LGBTQ+ elders from an annual federal aging survey, the National Survey of Older Americans Act Participants (NSOAPP), which is overseen by the Administration for Community Living (ACL). This crucial survey helps determine how $2 billion in publicly funded elder services gets distributed.
With the new regime in Washington seemingly determined to wipe out the progress toward LGBTQ+ inclusion in federal aging policies and programs, we at SAGE quickly realized that our LGBTQ+ elders and their advocates were in for a big fight. SAGE responded against this outrageous elimination with the #WeRefuseToBeInvisible campaign, a grassroots effort to mobilize a strong response during the Public Comment period that the administration is legally required to undertake before making major changes—such as erasing an entire population—to an important federal program. The Public Comment period for the survey exclusion ended on May 12, and thanks to an outpouring outrage against this erasure, Washington heard our unified message: We refuse to be invisible!
On April 27, a bipartisan group of 19 U.S. Senators led by Senator Susan Collins, Republican chair of the Senate’s Special Committee on Aging, publicly demanded a reversal of the Trump administration’s plans to erase LGBTQ+ elders. Then, on the last day of Public Comment, the Congressional LGBTQ+ Equality Caucus sent a bipartisan letter from 50 members of the House of Representatives to Tom Price, the head of the Department of Health and Human Services. The letter admonished the ACL, the division of HHS that oversees the survey, for its the erasure of LGBTQ+ adults and demanded that it reinstate the LGBTQ+ demographic question.
Now we await a final decision from the Trump administration on LGBTQ+ inclusion in the elder services survey. But while we wait, we will not back down in our opposition to the erasure of our older LGBTQ+ community, because unfortunately, there is every indication that more battles are looming on the horizon.
Through all of these battles and those to come, SAGE will continue to stand with and for our LGBTQ+ elder pioneers. We will not back down. We refuse to be invisible.
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